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...dedicated to training skillful and effective psychotherapists and psychoanalysts |
How many of you remember as I do the feelings of hope and dread as you watched your child go off on their first day of school? Would she like her teacher? Would he find his locker? Oh, the joy commingled with anxiety and loss! Even now, years later, with the children grown and the only new school supply in my home my just purchased academic calendar I still consider September a time of reflection and anticipation, and I think that my feelings are not that different from a child's. Here at the Institute some of us are returning from vacations, others are moving offices, and some are returning to the classroom as students or teachers. All of us are settling in for the new year with our patients. The fall brings a sense of recommitment to our own learning. And yet, along with the excitement at this time of the year lie our fears about how challenging our work truly is.
In this e-newsletter we continue to bring you articles by colleagues that we hope you will feel are thought provoking and emotionally moving. Our feature article is a wonderful piece by Charles Most on a child's capacity to be alone. We also have articles about how the psychoanalytic field has changed significantly over the last several decades. Seth Warren, Sally Rudoy and Joshua Lerner each beautifully write about different aspects of what Seth calls this "complicated and controversial" subject. I'd like you to write and tell us your thoughts about what these three have to say. We will publish as many of your letters to the editors as possible in our November issue. Please send your letters to cppnj@aol.com.
Wondering how to get in touch with your inner student? We have several exciting programs and events coming up. Stan Tatkin returns for another stimulating program on attachment approaches to couples therapy. Leslie Tsukroff presents a workshop with her ideas for energizing your business. Irwin Badin moderates a Friday night discussion on the "In Treatment" television series. And it's not too early to consider applying for The New Jersey Couples Therapy Training Program. A new class will begin in January. Look for all the details below, and don't forget that our annual welcome back brunch is October 3rd.
So sharpen those pencils, pull out the books and get in touch with your inner wonder about our profession - register for one of the many exciting programs we are offering!
Sincerely,
Mary Lantz
Editor-in-Chief
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Programs, Classes and Celebrations
October 3, 2010 - CPPNJ Welcome Back Brunch
Lenfell Hall and Hartman Lounge, The Mansion, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ
9:30 am - 1:30 pm
Join us on Sunday for our annual event to kick-off the new academic year. Faculty, associates and candidates will begin with separate meetings, then we will all come together for a delicious lunch and institute meeting.
This program is free for all members. Please RSVP to CPPNJ@aol.com by September 20, 2010.
October 24, 2010 - Candidates' Workshop
BUILD YOUR PRACTICE! Mental Health Marketing 101: Declare a Niche and Reach Your Ideal Client
Presented by Leslie Tsukroff, LCSW
10:00 am - 12:00 noon
This workshop is intended for clinicians who are interested in developing a viable, profitable and energized business. It is designed for both beginner and veteran private practitioners seeking to expand their marketing toolbox during the current economic climate. When insurance companies are placing more restrictions on access to mental health services, therapists need to implement innovative and highly effective ways of marketing their skills. Come prepared to invigorate your marketing plan. This workshop is FREE for all candidates! Contact cppnj@aol.com for details.
October 30, 2010 - AN ALL DAY CONFERENCE
Attachment Approaches to Couples Therapy
Lenfell Hall, The Mansion, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Stan Tatkin, PhD | Stan Tatkin is a clinician, researcher, teacher, and developer of A Psychobiological Approach To Couple TherapyŽ which integrates neuroscience, infant attachment, arousal regulation, and therapeutic enactment applied to adult primary attachment relationships. He lives in Calabasas, California, with his wife and daughter where he also runs his couple therapy practice.
He runs a monthly clinical study group for medical and mental health professionals (www.ahealthymind.org/) and training programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Austin. Dr. Tatkin received his early training in developmental object relations, Gestalt, psychodrama, and family systems theory.
He is a veteran of Allan Schore's study group and has studied with Mary Main on the clinical uses of the Adult Attachment Interview. He is a Contributing Editor of Allan Schore's Reader's Guide to Intersubjective Neurobiology; and is co-author with Marion Solomon of Love and War in Intimate Relationships: A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy due to be released in March of 2011.
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Spring 2011 All Day Conferences
March 20, 2011 - How the Attachment Patterns of Patient and Therapist Interlock: Nonverbal Experience, Mindfulness, Mentalizing and Change
Presented by: David Wallin, PhD
Lenfell Hall, The Mansion, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm
May 1, 2011 - Attachments Broken and Repaired: Privilege and Culture in Psychotherapy
Ruth Lijtmaer, Phd: Here and There: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Immigration
Nina Thomas, PhD: Witnessing in Psychoanalytic and "Extra Analytic" Contexts: Promise and Peril Following Political Violence
Cheryl Thompson, PhD: African-American Males and Disorders of Attachment
Lenfell Hall, The Mansion, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
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Speakers Bureau
CPPNJ has established a Speakers Bureau, to provide to the broader mental health community and to the public accessible information regarding the usefulness of psychoanalytic thinking in helping people deal with life situations. As a modern psychoanalytic community, with members who have varied areas of expertise, we have a depth of information to offer.
The Speakers Bureau receives requests from mental health organizations, schools, and other community resources to provide lectures, workshops, and demonstrations. CPPNJ members are encouraged to volunteer their services. Our outreach will benefit the public and our psychoanalytic community. In addition, the members who give the presentations have the opportunity to make themselves and their skills known beyond our community. You may contact Cathy Van Voorhees at cppnj@aol.com or Judy Kaufman jjlkten@optonoline.net if you are interested in presenting a topic.
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Director's Column
By Seth Warren, PhD
In a recent email exchange on our CPPNJ listserve, one of our faculty members, Bob Raymond, raised a controversial and, I think, essential question for all of us as psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to consider. He was responding to the dismay of a list member who was reporting that sex therapy was not covered by a client's health insurance plan.
I am reproducing Bob's full email posting, with his permission:
I would ask: why aren't we educating potential clients to understand that not all problems for which they seek help from a therapist can or should be covered by medical insurance? When it comes to relationship problems, and for purposes of this post I will suggest that a good starting place for dealing with sexual problems is to look at the relationship, why should prospective clients have the expectation that their insurance will cover treatment?
And more importantly, why are we not, as therapists who do not want our work to be controlled by insurance companies, assertively taking the position that non-medical disorders should be paid for directly by individuals seeking our services for non-medical problems?
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Getting to Know You: Barbara Davis, MSW
Barbara Davis, MSW |
Barbara Davis, MSW is a CPPNJ candidate in the second half of the program. She is currently Secretary of the Candidate's Organization, which supports and represents the professional needs of candidates within the Institute.
Where do you practice?
I have a private practice in South Orange, the same town where I live. In addition to my practice, I am a member of the Schools Committee of the South Orange Maplewood Community Coalition on Race; I volunteer at my son's school and recently became a triathlete. Some semesters, I teach part time at the Graduate School of Social Work at Rutgers University.
Click HERE to read full interview
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CPPNJ News
"In Treatment" Discussion Group Update
We are very happy to announce that the Psychology Department at Montclair State University has agreed to co-sponsor our discussion series. That means we will be able to use one of their sites at no cost to us. We will let you know the exact location of the meetings as soon as we get confirmation from the University.
Where ever we meet it is going to be likely that seating will be somewhat limited. In light of that, we would like to get a sense of how many people think they will be coming to these discussions. Please let Cathy Van Voorhees know at cppnj@aol.com or 973-912-4432 if you think you will be attending (even if you don't plan on coming every Friday). Please let her know if you will be bringing someone from outside of the Institute. We are, indeed, hoping that this event will attract many mental health professionals who may not know about us. It would be very helpful if you help in getting the word out. There is no fee for attending.
We will start meeting on Friday October 29th at 5:30pm. The show is scheduled to begin broadcasting on either Sunday October 24th or Monday October 25th. |
Our CPPNJ Blog
Talking About Talk Therapy
Sally Rudoy, LCSW
Recently, a cover story in the New York Times Magazine, "My Life in Therapy," by Daphne Merkin (August 8, 2010) generated an onslaught of responses in print and the blogosphere that, I believe, anyone passionate about psychoanalysis should be aware of and concerned about. In the article, Merkin details her 40-year history in psychoanalysis with various psychiatrists. The piece reads like a tell-all revenge fantasy against her former analysts. Her portrayal of the analysts is cartoonish in its presentation. Several analysts are silent and withholding. Others are bungling, authoritarian, and arrogant. Merkin's sarcastic tone throughout clues the reader that she believes the doctor is crazier than the patient.
Her article is an indictment against these individuals in specific and against psychoanalysis in general. She believes neither served her well, yet she returned again and again to "classical" analysis for treatment of her depression.
Click HERE for complete post
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 The Capacity to be Alone: A Treatment of a Latency Age Boy
By, Charles J. Most, PsyD
With the fall coming and the advent of another school year for children, I think back to the excitement of wearing new clothes, seeing friends that you hadn't seen over the summer and the opportunity to learn more. Many children are not so positive about starting school and some outright dread the thought of facing what in their inner reality is a terrifying separation from their mothers and real or imagined persecution from bullies or teachers. External and internal anxieties on the paranoid-schizoid level abound for the child that dreads returning to school. This article will address the beginning of my clinical work with Richard, an 11 year old boy who did not want to return to school or leave his mother, and feared many things in his life.
Winnicott's (1958) article on the developing capacity to be alone arises, in part, from Klein's (1946) work on the paranoid and depressive positions. The early onset of object relations and the manner that the young child manages fears of annihilation, persecution and the fear of loss offer us clues to the treatment of children who are struggling with the development of the capacity to be alone. The capacity to be alone is founded on the repetitive experience of being alone in the presence of a "good-enough" someone, first in external reality and then with the introjections of the "good" internal object representation. Ego immaturity is balanced through the ego support of the mother and the child is more and more able to be alone and to enjoy being alone. This developing capacity is vital for the management of anxieties both paranoid-schizoid and depressive that we must confront later in life. A feature of the paranoid-schizoid position is the ego's struggle to maintain its own integrity in the face of painful experiences that threaten annihilation. It was due to Richard's inability to manage such anxieties that his parents sought a consultation with me.
Click HERE for full article
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Book Recommendations
If you are wondering what to read next, take a look at the books our colleagues have fallen in love with...
Denial: A Memoir of Terror By Jessica Stern
Book review by Rose Oosting, PhD
"I have listened and I have been quiet all my life. But now I will speak."
In Denial, Jessica Stern explores the circumstances and consequences of her own rape at age 15, in 1973. In 1983, at age 25, Stern began a career writing about terrorists. While she was aware of the grip violence had on her imagination ("I am fascinated by the secret motivations of violent men, and I am good at ferreting them out"), she had never before been interested in the source of that fascination.
In 2003, following years of interviewing terrorists of various ilk, she published Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. In this book, Stern interviewed religious extremists from many backgrounds: Christian cultists and anti-abortionists, Jewish messianic militants, and Muslim fanatics, to try to find common themes: what draws people to kill in the name of God, how they justify it, and what keeps them motivated to continue. Unusually, her reaction to her fear of these people was to become more calm, and super-competent: "I found that I was able to silence judgment as I listened, to stop myself from feeling fear or horror." Though aware that her search to understand this kind of person put her in personal danger, she nevertheless pursued this interest, without much inquiring of herself what led to it.
Click HERE for full article
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The Standup Analyst
By Eric Sherman, LCSW
Have you heard the one about the psychoanalyst with no sense of humor? We all know the stereotype of the dour therapist, bearded and bespectacled, sitting silently behind the couch. Today's analyst is far from the cardboard cutout portrayed in movies and New Yorker cartoons. Many of us come equipped with fully-functional senses of humor; we actually utilize them in treatment. A light touch can help introduce difficult material and encourage obsessive patients to take themselves less seriously. To prove it, we are beginning our new academic year by letting out our Borscht Belts to bring you the first of what may be an occasional series of humorous essays on therapy, neuroses, human suffering -- you know, fun stuff. Because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar -- when it comes with Groucho glasses.
Insomniacs on the Verge Of a Nervous Breakdown
It's bedtime, ladies and gentlemen. You are exhausted and can barely keep your eyes open. As your head hits the pillow, you're sure to have a good night's sleep. But wait -- what's that bugle revelry? Oh-oh, we're off to the races!
It's Inner Demons off to a strong start, followed closely by Self Recriminations, Toss and Turn, Why Don't I Have Any Patients?, Stop Drinking So Much Coffee, But I Need It to Stay Awake, and People I Hate. Pleasant Dreams hasn't even made it out of the gate. What's this? Two fillies -- Call Your Mother and I Don't Want To -- have come out of nowhere, and they seem to be battling one another. They are neck and neck down the home stretch, with Toss and Turn leading the pack. It's going to be a close finish. Toss and Turn, Inner Demons; Inner Demons, Toss and Turn. And the winner is: Take Some Ambien by a nose -- no, wait, by a mouth. Something tells me this exciting night of racing has just begun.
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Recruitment Report
Sally Rudoy's timely CPPNJ blog about the New York Times magazine article entitled "My Life in Therapy" refers to Jonathan Shedler's work on measuring outcomes of psychodynamic psychotherapy, which demonstrates its effectiveness. Rudoy's post was picked up nationally in Liquidia, a compendium of blog posts from around the world, and confirms the importance of Nina Thomas' Division 39 Project "Redrawing the Face of Psychoanalysis" which she launched this past spring.
It seems to me that all of us are being called upon to reflect the face of psychoanalysis for those persons who want to know more about CPPNJ. In The Evolving Self (1980), Robert Kegan Ph.D. talks about the "ability to be recruited" by another person. He says,
"Who comes into a person's life may be the greatest single factor of influence to what that life becomes. Who comes into a person's life is in part a matter of luck, in part a matter of one's power to recruit others, but in large part a matter of other people's ability to be recruited." The members of the Recruiting Committee invite all CPPNJ members to consider their power to recruit, and be recruited by, the persons who come into our lives in 2010-11.
Marion Houghton, Chair
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Joshua Lerner, LCSW
 | Legislative Alert
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has published a proposed rule for the 2011 Medicare Part B "physician fee schedule" that would significantly reduce Medicare payments to clinical social workers and psychologists that bill Medicare Part B services. The highly complex rule addresses changes in the physician fee schedule and other Medicare Part B payment policies to ensure that rates are updated to reflect changes in medical practice and the relative value of services. Unfortunately, the rule would significantly reduce payments for mental health services due to revisions in one component of the formula, the medical economic index (MEI).
Click HERE for full article.
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Thank you for joining us. Look for our next newsletter in October when the featured article will be a profile of Monica Carsky, PhD.
No need to print this email - for future reference, all issues are archived. |
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